A Light to Bring Revelation
by Katta
Summary: He’s been having nightmares most of his adult life. The quest for a man of evil to find atonement. Spoilers for the movie Serenity.


**A Light to Bring Revelation**

He's been having nightmares most of his adult life. Every night, shrill voices call out in terror, faces are distorted in pain, dead eyes stare at him. Sometimes he can feel himself in these dreams, moving through his enemies with his sword as if they are no more substantial than a deck of cards. One simple movement, and off with their heads. It's a ballet danced in blood, and the images are always there, hiding behind his eyelids even when he's awake.

They used to be a lot easier to take.

Obviously, he had doubts even before. What man wouldn't, after the things he has done? He tried to reconcile himself to the thought that he was evil, acknowledged the nightmares and the loss of life it represented, because after all, no great development ever came without sacrifice. It was a hard thing to face. Nobody wants to be evil, not even in the pursuit of a greater good. But he did it. He was the bloodied scalpel in the hand of the surgeon, and he knew the harm he did to the limb was needed to save the body.

The Alliance isn't perfect, but he trusted that one day it would become so, and then what did it matter if he had to be the last limb cut off?

Now he can't recall his vision of that perfection. If there is a body, he can't see it. All he can see are terrified humans bumbling about in an incomprehensible universe. Some of them with delusions of grandeur. Some of them dead by his hand.

He thought there was someone out there who had all the answers. He built his pathetic, sinful life around it. The only thing he left out, the one doubt he refused to voice was that the Alliance doesn't know what the hell it's doing. The surgeon is blind, the scalpel a simple murder weapon.

He contemplates suicide, but to what gain? One death cannot atone for many. He can find no solution. No answers.

Yet his soul rebels against the nothingness. He travels the universe, observing the people around him. They live. They exist. What answers have they found?

He reads every holy book he can find, from the ancient sources of Earth-that-was to the latest spiritual wave. He finds no peace, no perfection.

But in a remote chapel on the outskirts of the solar system where the shepherds are as dirt poor as the parishioners, he finds the words, "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Is it true? He can't tell. He knows that one death cannot atone for many. But he hopes. The words refuse to leave him. Very slowly, over the course of years, it comes to him that it's not about death; it's about life. One death giving many lives, if the apostles are to be believed.

One life giving many lives.

He keeps observing people, but suppresses the greedy wish to know their truths. Instead, he looks for the cracks, the pain and fear of their lives, and he tries to help as well as he can.

Sometimes he fails. Oh, hell, most of the time he fails. He is so used to looking for a better world that the weaknesses of humanity frustrates him. And worst of all is the grating knowledge that in the middle of this sinfulness there is _good_, and he never knows where he should expect to find it. He certainly never expected to find it in a thieving, smart-mouthed Browncoat.

He never wants to kill another human being ever, for as long as he lives, but sometimes he misses the clarity of those days. His Alliance ID card is still in his pocket; he never officially resigned. He knows he's never coming back, but he can't throw it away. The Alliance is like an aching tooth for him – he refuses to touch it, but the pain still grows. Sooner or later, he will have to confront it.

When the ships finally come and he brings out his gun, he feels no clarity, no peace, and though he tries hard to believe, God feels so very hypothetical.

And still he prays - he fires and prays and tries in vain to protect his people.

It's a bitter irony when he realizes that the ships aren't coming for his sake, when he looks into the eyes of the Operative in charge and sees that he could be anyone; he could be the innocent old man everyone takes him for and he'd still die. He's just a simple pawn, an image behind another man's eyelids, a nightmare to brush aside when the work needs to be done.

Pawns become queens when they reach the end of the board. He never knew it worked the other way around.

Mal shows up when it's already too late, but it's good to see him in one piece, the pawn that just got promoted. The people of Serenity run around, looking for survivors. They won't find any. He hopes they can make it out alive, that something in this mess of a battle will make sense.

He can hear Mal speak to him, but his vision is filled with a bright shining light, and though he still struggles with faith, he knows that at last, thank God, he has found some peace -


End file.
